New Life Stories: Singapore-Centred, Community-Minded
Founded in 2014, New Life Stories is a Singapore-based Institution of Public Character (IPC) that aims to prevent intergenerational incarceration by supporting children of incarcerated parents alongside their families. Headquartered at 64 Kallang Bahru, Singapore, the organisation operates holistic support programmes rooted in professional counselling, storytelling, and open visits.
This initiative serves as a bridge between prisons and family life, blending emotional resilience with case management, storytelling, and peer support. It partners with agencies including the Singapore Prison Service, Children’s Society, and Salvation Army, ensuring continuity within the broader Yellow Ribbon reintegration framework.
Storytelling Workshops That Build Bonds
At the heart of the programme is Dear Mama/Dear Papa, where parents nearing release are guided through weekly workshops to write and record personal stories for their children. These handwritten stories and MP3 narrations become part of the Love Beyond the Walls anthology, shared with children during visits, giving both generations a voice and emotional connection despite separation.
These recordings are often accompanied by illustrated books produced by volunteer artists, creating tangible keepsakes. The stories reflect hope, remorse, reconciliation, and the wish to stay emotionally present, despite physical distance. President Halimah Yacob even penned the introduction for a volume launched in 2023, underscoring its national reach.
Unbarriered Visits and Mentoring Beyond the Walls
In-chap prison visits are redesigned to allow unbarriered family interaction—handshakes, hugs, and play, without glass partitions. Supported by counsellors and volunteers, these visits follow storytelling sessions and aim to restore trust and bonding between parents and their children.
To ensure emotional continuity, the Learning Friends programme pairs children of inmates with community volunteers for mentoring, academic support, and companionship. This mentorship can ease emotional instability and help keep young parents on a positive developmental path.
Impact by the Numbers and Lives Touched
Annually, New Life Stories facilitates over 750 parent-child reconnections and delivers more than 50,000 hours of befriending and case support across its programmes. These efforts reach more than 50,000 beneficiaries in total—including incarcerated parents, children, and families.
Outcomes reported include greater emotional security from children, renewed parental purpose, and safer reintegration. Many stories in the anthology illuminate transformative change, like Gopal’s “The Wave in the Ocean” or Fia’s Sofia. The tangible benefits also reflect in lower recidivism rates when family ties are strengthened.
Community Healing Through Family
As Singapore commemorates 60 years, its story is not just built on infrastructure or economic growth, but on deeper values of compassion, second chances, and connection. New Life Stories embodies those ideals—creating new life stories for families once fractured by incarceration.
This nonprofit is thoroughly Singaporean in identity, mission, and impact. Its work invites national reflection: that healing begins in relationships, restoration in empathy, and resilience in reconnection—values at the heart of SG60’s journey forward.
